Mine Safety Advocate Tony Oppegard '80 Wins Whistleblower Case

Mine safety advocate Tony Oppegard '80 was quoted in The Huffington Post on his client winning reinstatement in a whistleblower case.

Kentucky miner Charles Scott Howard lost his job at Cumberland River Coal Co. in May 2011 after years of battling with management over safety issues at the mine. Now a federal judge has ordered that Howard's company immediately reinstate him at the mine and pay a $30,000 fine for discriminating against a whistleblower.

"They tried to find any way they could to keep him from coming back to work," said Tony Oppegard, who, along with Wes Addington, represented Howard. The decision, Oppegard added, "lays bare Big Coal's tiresome mantra that safety is its top priority. ... At Arch, 'safety first' is just a meaningless slogan."